'Studio 60' saved, and other perplexing TV deals

And so, the great EW debate of 2006 may now end: NBC has given Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip a full season pick up. What we don’t know: whether the show will stay in its Monday at 10 p.m. timeslot when the network announces its midseason lineup next week. What we do know: Apparently, Studio 60 has TV’s highest concentration of viewers with a household income of more than $75,000. (We presume that’s because all of Hollywood is watching.) Will those upscale viewers draw deeper-pocketed advertisers, enough to make up for the show’s low ratings?

Also receiving a full season pick up: Men in Trees, which will move to Thursdays at 10 p.m. on Nov. 30. (Sorry, Six Degrees.) And receiving orders for more scripts (not an official renewal but always a good sign): NBC’s Friday Night Lights and 30 Rock and The CW’s Veronica Mars and One Tree Hill.

In other TV news, it’s getting harder to put off adding Showtime to your cable: Michael C. Hall’s Dexter has already been granted a Season 2, and now Variety reports that David Duchovny will start in an untitled drama pilot about a charming character named Hank Moody, “a novelist trying to raise a kid on his own while battling an addiction to sex and drugs.” (If only Charlie Sheen didn’t have Two and a Half Men…)

The premium cable network has also signed Kevin Smith to its pilot of the British import Manchild, a title I’d only heard of because it starred Buffy’s Anthony Stewart Head on the BBC. Smith will be joined in his make-believe midlifecrisis by Sex and the City’s John Corbett and Rome‘sJames Purefoy. (This is where I second my editor’s first thoughts: “a)Can he act? There’s a reason he played a guy named Silent Bob, and b) Smith’s middle-aged enough to be facing a midlife crisis? Damn, we’reold.”)

And on a serious note, Joely Richardson has said she may never returnto Nip/Tuck. According to The Daily Mail,her 15-year-old daughter, Daisy, must undergo a series of surgeries fora rare condition that affects circulation in her legs. Richardson willreturn to England to be with her. Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphyhopes Richardson will be back: “I don’t want to do the show withouther,” he said. We’re sorry to see her go, but we can’t wait to see how he writes her exit from theshow – let’s just hope it’s nothing too gruesome.